WHY has The Da Vinci Code enjoyed such enormous success in English and then in translations (into French, modern Hebrew, Italian and so forth)?
One might answer that it is a good piece of escapism, which produces an intriguing cocktail that mixes religion, conspiracy, sex, murder, and mystery. Maybe the reason for its success is as simple as that.
Others have different answers to the question of its success.
The scholar who reviewed the Hebrew translation, Professor Kleinberg of the history department at the University of Tel Aviv, pointed out some of the gross historical errors and lies.
He dismissed the writing as moving from cliche to cliche, and then faced the question about the mega success of The Da Vinci Code.
He wrote in the Haaretz Daily (November 7, 2003): “It seems that the reason for the success of the book is neither the sophistication of the riddles in it, nor the very modest quality of the writing.
“What thrills many of the readers is its pretension to a revealing and daring interpretation of authentic materials from Christian history and the Christian religion.
“The Da Vinci Code purports to reveal a Catholic conspiracy and show us its underpinnings.”
Prof Kleinberg then doggedly lists a litany of historical errors and fabrications – for instance, the claim that the descendants of Jesus married into the Merovingian royal dynasty.
This claim is based on an alleged figure called Giselle de Razes. She is supposed to have married King Dagobert II in the 7th century.
But Giselle de Razes never existed historically. She was invented in the 20th century.
Kleinberg then asks: “What more can be said?”
Just that I feel sorry for the charming heroine Sophie Neveu in The Da Vinci Code.
She was often treated as ingenuous and even stupid. Two wretched men spent many pages of the novel lecturing at her and bombarding her with what are often sheer fabrications.
The villain, Sir Leigh Teabing, does just that. He is named as an ex-royal historian.
There is no such job. There is an astronomer royal, members of the Royal College of Physicians, but there is no such post as royal historian.
The so-called hero, Robert Langdon, is identified as a professor of symbology at Harvard University. There are no chairs of symbology anywhere in the world.
In any case, Langdon is so misinformed that I couldn’t image a committee at Harvard voting for him.
On their performance, I would not have given either of these men their imaginary jobs, let alone voted for Langdon’s tenure.
As for Sophie, I hope she changed her mind and never kept the rendezvous with Langdon in Florence. She deserved a much better relationship than that.
Fr Gerald O’Collins is an Australian Jesuit priest who teaches theology at the Gregorian University in Rome.
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